


Everything Broken

by busaikko



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s03e03 Irresistible, Gen, Mind Rape, Rape Fantasy, Therapy, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 13:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I'm in a bad mood," John warns Heightmeyer as he settles and resettles on her sofa.  He can't get comfortable at all these days.  He eyes her; she gives him a bland smile.  He looks up at the ceiling and slouches down.  "I can't jerk off to take the edge off, you know?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Hm," Heightmeyer says.  John's pretty sure that they're playing a game, one where she pretends to be uninterested in an attempt to make him feel safe talking.  Mostly he just ends up wanting to shock her.  He hasn't so far, he thinks.  "Why is that?"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Mific for the beta <3
> 
> *
> 
> FicFinishing February! #1...

"I'm in a bad mood," John warns Heightmeyer as he settles and resettles on her sofa. He can't get comfortable at all these days. He eyes her; she gives him a bland smile. He looks up at the ceiling and slouches down. "I can't jerk off to take the edge off, you know?"

"Hm," Heightmeyer says. John's pretty sure that they're playing a game, one where she pretends to be uninterested in an attempt to make him feel safe talking. Mostly he just ends up wanting to shock her. He hasn't so far, he thinks. "Why is that?"

John snorts. "Obvious reasons." He scratches one knee, where he has a healing bruise. "My go-to fantasy stopped working."

"Tell me about it," Heightmeyer suggests. John never has, because he considers it personal and private, and also he's always been kind of worried about what it implies about him as a person. As a man, maybe, or as a leader. But now he needs to know, so he takes a breath and tells her.

Nothing about it sounds sexy there in the bright diffuse light of her office, as he uses efficient words to give her the general picture.

"When did you start having this fantasy?" Heightmeyer asks when he's done, not even looking at what she's noting on her clipboard.

John turns his head just enough to give her a one-eyed baleful glare. He can't read her expression. "I'm forty, so, half my life," he says, aiming for sardonic, but sounding indignant instead. He hates his voice.

Heightmeyer raises an eyebrow at him. "You like that it makes you feel..." she starts, and John rolls his head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment before dropping an arm over his eyes.

"I don't know," he says, like the answer should be obvious. _Duh._ "Like someone's pinning me down. Safe." He feels his face go hot, because his mouth's just made a connection that he hadn't realized in his brain. He's uncomfortable. This is why he never talks about these things.

"I'm not going to ask you about your past," Heightmeyer says. "You know that." John set that out as a ground rule when they started having these little chats, except he'd said _childhood_ , which he's pretty sure had been a mistake, giving away too much. But Heightmeyer's been great about keeping John's conditions, and therefore his trust, which is why, John guesses, he's finally starting to be able to say stuff.

John runs his tongue over his lips, because they've gone dry, and says, "I don't like being touched." He's said this before; it's always been his default fall-back problem to puzzle over in therapy. He knows it's weird, and he doesn't know why he's wired this way. He niggles at it, like moving a loose tooth with your tongue, and he thinks it has something to do with the fantasies that get him off, where he gets trained to _beg_ for it.

Heightmeyer shifts in her seat; John can see her pull her feet up onto the opposite sofa, tucking her legs to the side. "I don't think that's true," she says, contemplatively. "Or at least, there are different kinds and degrees of touching. Rough-housing, martial arts training, sexual touch, intimate touch, touch in response to or because of emotional needs, and so on."

"Those," John says. He slides a bit more to the side, sprawling out like a teenager, but getting a good view of the ocean. "Like the sex kind. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I get it wrong."

"So in your fantasy," Heightmeyer says, half-reading from her notes. "You're held down – _safe_ – and you're not supposed to do anything but _take it_?"

"That's unfair," John protests. "I didn't say that."

"You kind of did," Heightmeyer replies dryly. "Am I wrong?"

"I thought," John says, and swallows, "it had something to do with," and he wishes he could stop squirming any minute now, he wishes Heightmeyer would just go ahead and fill in _this_ blank, too, instead of being patient and _waiting_. "I like being fucked," John says, and he wishes he sounded defiant, but no. His damn voice again. He hates this _sofa_.

Heightmeyer just nods, serious, and John could _cry_ from frustration. "In your fantasy, the men fucking you probably don't care if you're gay or not," she says, and as carefully as John listens, he doesn't hear any judgment in her tone. He's surprised that she says _fuck_ but he's also relieved that she doesn't use other, more complicated words. "They're –" she checks her notes again – "anonymous, brutal, and have nothing better to do than fuck for hours and days on end. The fantasy isn't _about_ them. It's about _you_ , and your reaction." She leans back. "In your fantasy you get to be uninhibitedly sexual." She pauses. "Having a go-to masturbation fantasy is hardly the worst way to cope with stress."

John raises his eyebrows. "That's it?"

Heightmeyer smiles. "I know people," she says carefully. "If you want someone to talk to."

She brings Atlantis' LGBT community up every now and then, like a ritual; John guesses she feels she has to, maybe because she's straight. He likes that she doesn't think she has all the answers, but... "Have you _met_ me?" he counters. "It takes a gun to my head to get me to talk."

She laughs, and John smirks, feeling like he's scored a point.

"What you fantasize about doesn't mean that you want to be raped, or be a rapist, or that you condone rape in real life," Heightmeyer goes on, and John feels like he's been punched hard in the stomach, all the air going out of him past the sudden hard lump in his throat, because he's been trying not to think that word for _days_. "And I know you know that, because you _do_ talk to me. But if you need the reassurance..."

"I should have killed Kolya when he invaded," John says, angry with himself. "Never leave an enemy alive. But I knew, down the line, his people – we needed them as allies. Lavin, on the other hand..." His voice trails off, and he raises his hands like he's shaking an invisible ball. "He came here, and he fucked with my people, and we sent him _home_ , with our gate address, to the women he'd – " He cuts himself off, shakes his head. "I should have shot _both_ of them. In cold blood. Not because they pissed me off, but because they're dangerous, and God only knows what they'll do next."

Heightmeyer tips her head to the side, like her neck is stiff from sitting twisted up like that. "Do you think people respect you for your treatment of enemies, or do you think that's seen as a weakness?"

"Everyone here's familiar with the Geneva Conventions," John says, quick and defensive. "That's part of what makes fighting Wraith so damn hard." He knows Heightmeyer worked at the SGC for years, and she wrote some important papers about the freakish things that happen to people who go through Stargates. He trusts her not to think of the military as narrow-minded brutes.

"How did it feel when you were the only person on Atlantis unaffected by the drug?" Heightmeyer asks. John just looks at her, eyebrows raised, because that's a stupid question. "Being drugged," she says slowly, "felt very... simple. Everything besides concern for... Lavin –" no one says his first name on Atlantis, now – "faded away, and when he was happy..." She smiles ruefully. "It felt safe."

John feels sick, and he's sure it shows on his face. "Everyone turned on me," he blurts out. "He promised to have Ronon pin me to the wall like he did Rodney, and make me – and make me," he repeats, no strength in his voice, and covers his eyes.

At the time he hadn't allowed himself to feel anything, because he had a plan and if it failed, the city would have been lost. But he's been paying for that in sleepless nights and nightmare-riddled naps ever since. He can't even jerk off because his best fantasy is broken, and he keeps being a dick to people who he knows weren't in control of themselves. It's been bad enough that he asked Heightmeyer to make time for him, even though he knows she, Teyla, and the new doctor, Keller, have been up to their eyeballs in group therapy sessions and meditation, self-defense classes, and prescribing sleeping pills.

"He would have taken everything, got my people killed, raped... everyone, and we'd have asked for more."

"I know you were at the emergency meetings," Heightmeyer says, and she sounds a little impatient. "Fortunately for us, Lavin didn't believe in sex outside marriage. He didn't do anything worse – physically – than groping and petting several women over clothing."

"Bad enough," John says.

"Treating people like they had the choice to say no doesn't help, you know," Heightmeyer adds, and John knows just the look she's leveling at him, without even looking at her.

"I know," John says, miserable and furious and _stuck_. "I _know_ , and believe me, the last thing I want right now is to be an asshole. But you've got to understand," and he leans up on his elbow, turning toward her like proximity could show how sincere he is, "part of who _I_ am, fundamentally, is a guy who takes responsibility. I... cannot allow myself to believe that anyone can take that away from me." He grimaces. "I make a lot of mistakes. I'm a consistent fuck-up. But I'm _never_ going to be a victim."

Heightmeyer tilts her head to the side. "With the Iratus mutation, or Thalan, do you believe what happened to you resulted from your conscious choices?" She waves her hand. "Maybe not _punishment_ per se, but what you deserved for having made poor choices?"

John tries to imagine being the kind of person to whom that wasn't obvious. "Yeah."

Heightmeyer makes a quick note, barely looking at her clipboard. "And Carson inviting Lavin to Atlantis was due to your poor choice."

"I could have stopped what was happening." Heightmeyer doesn't say anything. The way she looks at him makes him feel like even though she doesn't know _half_ of the poor choices he's made in his life, she could probably guess. He's so angry with her about that, he feels like crying. Except he doesn't cry any more than he lets himself cede responsibility. He doesn't cry and he doesn't like being touched, and most days it never even crosses his mind, because why would he think about that? It's just that he's off balance, with that motherfucking bastard turning everyone against him, and the shadows in people's eyes now.

It's just that this has happened before, he wants to say, comes so close to saying. He breathes in so he can push the words out, but nothing comes. He tries again, with no better luck. He feels worn out and wrung out and _old_.

"Can I tell you what I think?" Heightmeyer asks. She gets up and grabs a box of tissues off her desk and sets it down on the table in front of John as she sits back down.

John takes one and blows his nose. He's still not over his cold completely; it hasn't been seven days yet. Heightmeyer doesn't say anything, waiting for his answer, which means that John has to think. He's getting a hell of a headache. "I guess." She raises her eyebrows at him. "Yeah." As soon as he gives her permission, something clenches up in him hard, terror surfacing like Godzilla out of the ocean. "No." His hands are shaking as he leans over to drop the tissue in the wastepaper basket in front of the window. "Not today."

"Okay," Heightmeyer says. John used to get pissed at her for not pushing him; he'd always kind of thought that was the point of seeing someone. Now he can recognize that she uses some kind of emotional aikido. She sets up a situation, and lets him do all the pushing by himself. It sucks. "What do you want to hear?"

John's shoulders tighten. His skin's icy, even though he's pretty sure the room's temperature is normal and hasn't changed. "That nobody blames me."

"John." He figured she wouldn't let him get away with that. But he had to try. "We're talking about you, not everybody on this base."

"That _I_ don't blame me? That I'm safe now and everything's fine, everyone's great, letting a goddamn rapist put his hands all over my people is all water under the bridge and what the hell's wrong with me that I can't even jerk off now without remembering – " John cuts himself off and lets his head drop. _Didn't happen,_ he tells himself, like he's been telling himself for days now in the hope that one of these times he'll believe himself. _Didn't happen, not on my watch._ He just wants to go back to bed and stay there for a week. "I probably need a hug."

His head's too heavy to lift, but he thinks he can hear Heightmeyer's smile in her voice. "Do you want a hug?"

"You're not supposed to ask," John tells her. "Because then I have to answer, and, you know. No, I don't want a hug."

"I know." And now she sounds gentle, and John _wishes_ as hard as he can for the impossible. "But _you_ know that I have to ask."

John sighs. "I hate being a jerk to people over things that weren't their fault. I'm going to stop that. I'll ask Teyla to kick my ass if I don't. She's got a lot of free-floating hostility."

"That sounds like a plan." Heightmeyer shifts, her feet sliding to the floor, like she's getting ready to get up. John wonders how much of her valuable time he's eaten up today. "You trust her."

"Yeah," John says. "I do."

"And you trust yourself."

John swallows, then makes himself sit up. "This was a hard hit," he says, eyes on the table. "But I'm working on it." He puts his fingertips on the table, lightly, to ground himself. "Maybe try not to be a jerk to myself." He looks up and raises an eyebrow, letting the corners of his mouth follow in a smile. "Which would be easier if I wasn't having trouble jerking off."

Heightmeyer grins. "It'll... come to you."

John knows he must look dumbstruck, because Heightmeyer's expression becomes almost gleeful, like she's playing with him.

"They teach dirty jokes in shrink school these days?" He's not upset, though he's pretty sure twenty minutes earlier if she'd said that, he'd have been out the door and never come back. He doesn't envy her her job at all; he couldn't do it if his life depended on it.

She shrugs and stands, and John's on his feet just a second behind her, wiping his hands down the sides of his trousers.

"I have three older brothers," she tells him. "I used to embarrass them."

"Bet you still do," John says, and she fails to look innocent of the charge. "Thanks. For today."

"I'm always here when you need me." Kate holds out her hand, and after a moment John shakes, just like the normal person he's going to be someday. Maybe. "See you at the general medical meeting on Monday."

John doesn't look back as he walks out. He's pretty sure that Heightmeyer has a file on him that she updates with all the stuff he lets slip, like a collection of pieces that would be damning if she ever assembled them.

The sun's still high, and John thinks about all the other stuff he can do with the rest of his afternoon off, before the evening shift starts. He could go running, go for a swim, go whack a bucket of golf balls into the ocean.

But what he wants, he discovers when he takes a moment to think, is his team. He radios Rodney and Teyla and Ronon, and half an hour later they're all on the balcony outside the mess hall, drinking experimental bean-powder milkshakes.

Rodney's rambling, explaining how coffee's not made from just any beans. John tunes out on Rodney's attempt to describe cappuccino to Ronon, who John figures is playing dumb because Rodney explaining stuff is funny.

"Hey, Teyla," John says, taking advantage of the distraction. "If you see me being a jerk, just hit me or something, okay?"

Teyla gives him a knowing smile. John worries for a moment that she's keeping a list. "I can do that."

"Okay," John says, and nods, and feels something knotted up inside of him ease. "Thanks. I... appreciate it."

"Any time." Teyla covers his hand with hers briefly, a slight warm pressure. John's not used to having someone to catch him when he stumbles or falls. He wants to get used to it, wants to be able to let go.

Maybe not today, he admits, but someday, and he leans over to tell Ronon a complete and total lie about the religious significance of Tim Horton's in Canada. Rodney apprises him of how very wrong he is, and Ronon swipes the last of Rodney's milkshake.

John relaxes a bit more. He's put himself in good hands, he tells himself. He's comfortable here with his team, surrounded by his people; comforted, and safe.

~*~

> "I have woven a parachute out of everything broken."  
> William Stafford  
> 

~*~

center 


End file.
